ON THE EVENING HIS CRUCIFIXION becomes imminent, after Judas leaves on his mission of betrayal, Jesus makes this promise to his disciples: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16-18)
Later in the same evening, just before leaving for the Garden of Gethsemane and his impending arrest, he prays to his Father on our behalf, “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” (John 17:25-26)
The indwelling Holy Spirit of God is the source of all that we depend upon in our lives as Jesus-followers. So which is it – are we indwelt by the Holy Spirit or by the Spirit of Jesus Christ? This question may perplex us unless we satisfactorily work through a personal understanding of the theology of the Trinity. Defining the Trinity was a central aspect of the Councils of Chalcedon, and was not without controversy before, or ongoing controversy after. Such controversy exists in our own day.
The orthodox definition of the Trinity is essentially this: *“The union of three persons in one Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy immediately makes this observation: **“Every term in this statement (God, exists, as or in, equally divine, Person) has been variously understood.”
How are we mere pew-dwellers to settle this acceptably in our own minds, both biblically and experientially? This is not an easy thing to do—but it’s a necessary thing when we face the hard questions that require us to find the faith to trust God in the middle of difficult times. This conundrum is never going to be resolved through the intellect; conversely it cannot be ‘satisfactorily’ resolved by blind faith for many. Blind faith may legitimately resolve this for the less-inquiring minds, but there is an honest place in dialogue, not with man, but with God, to explore these concepts. If, confusingly for our inquiring minds, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all God, yet none is individually the other—another explanation of the Trinity—how are we to resolve our concern?
Let us consider this, carefully: “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord.” (Isa. 1:18a) God speaks through the prophet, and this in the context of sin-soaked man, confused by his own thinking. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” (Isa. 1:18b) In this context, viewed licitly through the expanded Christian lens of the mind of Christ, we are unable to reason the truths of God in our unsanctified state. We may be saved, but not spiritually mature enough in our submission to the Spirit of God to apprehend the deeper truths of the self-evident God.
Consider the testimony of the apostles. The apostle John says that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) One who walked and talked and lived for three years with Jesus says ‘He is God.’ The apostle Paul says more expansively, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:15-17) Additionally Paul describes Jesus as, “Christ, who is God over all.” (Rom. 9:5) The apostle Thomas calls him “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28) Apostle Peter calls Jesus “Our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Pet. 1:1) If, as we consider their testimony, we examine their and Jesus’ statements in the orthodox context of the inerrancy of scriptures, we can only reasonably come to one conclusion. Their various expressions that surround the nature of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit either must be accepted as truth, or everything that we think/believe is truth comes into question. The latter position renders us unable to trust in any interpretation of truth from anyone about anything. The former combines reason and faith with the resolve to trust in the God of the scriptures.
We return to Jesus to further refine our thoughts. He says that “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John. 4:22) God is a spirit, in Christian theology ‘coeternal with the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ Jesus was with God in the beginning, and is God, according to John. In Jesus’ own words, the Holy Spirit ‘will be in you,’ and ‘I myself (will) be in them.’ We turn further to the inerrant scriptures for progressive clarity. Paul says that Jesus, “being in very nature God… made himself nothing… being made in human likeness… becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:6-8)
Jesus came to earth in human form, so that his sinless life as a human could satisfy the wrath of God on behalf of mankind. He returned to heaven in a glorified form that we do not yet comprehend fully, and must rely on the inerrant scriptures to begin to understand. John encourages us, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him.” (1 John 3:2) Jesus reveals something more of what will accomplish this in us: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.” (John 17:22-23)
God is spirit. His spirit is seen made flesh in the person of Jesus, who became flesh, but who returned—in a visible but glorified body, to the Father, where he came from. And God then sent the Holy Spirit, unfleshed, into the flesh of our bodies in new birth, where he now resides. The same spirit that is God, that was placed upon Jesus at his baptism at the Jordan river, that is the Holy Spirit that now resides in you and me. The answer we seek is perhaps best explained by saying that the spirit of God was expressed in Jesus, remains in Jesus, and is shared as the Holy Spirit that now dwells within us. These are all the same.
Ultimately, the answer for our question lies more in the realm of faith than it does in reason. But faith does not negate the need for and the assurances of reason; in fact, reason supports faith, and in faith reason is made complete. Not one or the other, not simply both and, but all in unity, even in the tension of mystery. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19)
Q. Is my mind fully at rest with my faith?
*“Trinity,” Webster’s Dictionary, 1828.
**Tuggy, Dale, “Trinity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/trinity/>.
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